CWGC intern marks 100th anniversary of her great great great uncle's death

The second wave of CWGC interns are now in post at the Commission’s Tyne Cot Cemetery and Thiepval Memorial. Emily Robins, from Dorset, is one of the six based in France. This week, she travelled to Belgium to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of her great great great uncle, Captain Alfred Charles Bratt, who is buried at Tyne Cot Cemetery.

Capt Bratt, of the 1st/5th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment, died on 4 October 1917 during the Battle of Broodseinde, part of the Third Battle of Ypres.

Emily, who joined the Commission’s intern programme last month, said: “Before coming to CWGC I knew a little about uncle Alfred, but it’s through this scheme I have been able to find out so much more about where he lived, died and fought.”

Here she shares how the Commission has helped her learn more about Alfred.

“My undergraduate dissertation focused on a pacifist artwork of the First World War and while chatting on the phone to my granny about its progress she mentioned having a picture of her great uncle Alfred who had been killed in action, as well as some of his artefacts.

She later showed me a dashing photograph she had of Alfred in his uniform and a bracelet he had once given my nana Kay - Alfred’s niece and my great grandmother. The bracelet features a French franc engraved with my nana’s initials and ‘Somme 1916’. Although my nana died when I was very young, both my father and his brothers remember it being worn and treasured by her, as it is now worn and treasured by me. However, Alfred’s war experience still remained a mystery.

I was able to work out Alfred was in the Royal Warwickshire regiment from researching the insignia on his uniform but, due to some confusion with his surname, I believed he had died from wounds in a Wolverhampton hospital in 1918.

However, after realising my mistake and while doing some research for my interview with the Commission, I used the search on the CWGC website to find out more about Alfred. I discovered where he was buried, and through the skills developed during this internship I’ve been able to locate where his body was found, as well as more detail about his battalion and what actions he would have taken part in.”

New Zealand’s Minister of Defence visited the CWGC’s Buttes New British Cemetery yesterday to honour the country’s soldiers lost 100 years ago, as part of a First World War battlefields tour in Belgium.

Today, 15 February, marks 100 years since pilot and dance superstar Vernon William Blythe Castle died in a plane crash in Texas. Commemorated by the Commission in New York, Vernon was a distinguished pilot who flew hundreds of combat missions. Here is more about the man remembered as one of America’s first celebrity dancers.